Location, location, location: precursors and prognoses for pancreatic cancer

SR Hingorani - Gastroenterology, 2007 - gastrojournal.org
Cancers of the ductal epithelium in the pancreas are unusually lethal. Infiltrating pancreatic
ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA), the entity typically implied by the more generic “pancreatic
cancer,” portends a dismal prognosis and, uniquely among all the epithelial malignancies, is
rarely curable even when resected at the earliest stages of invasion. Intriguingly, however,
not all cancers with ductal differentiation are equivalent. The location within the ductal tree
and the specific type of precursor lesion—cystic or not—together with the modifying …